Month

October 2016

Since Frans Timmermans – First Vice President of the European Commission – came to Syracuse (September 1, #EUDialogues the Greek Theatre), we took courage, starting to setting positive actions for inter-religious dialogue between philosophical and non-confessional organizations.

.

The memory of Shimon Peres, President of Israel (shown here in the center of the picture with, to his right, the PLO leader Yasser Arafat and to his left Yitzhak Rabin, together in the act of receiving the prize Nobel Peace Prize in 1995 in the Oslo Accords reason), this is another help to revive the thought that a different balance in the Middle East is possible. Unfortunately, today the harrowing truths are the conflicts that tear Syria and threatening the peace in Libya, Algeria and Tunisia. Notwithstanding, there is no other way to take action that can be sustained and convergent, if not that of dialogue which, even more than politics, should be on the level of culture and values.

With this understanding, we have recently organized – together with the Knights of Damon and Pithyas, INFORUM Association – a workshop on the intermediary role of the Samaritans – October 25 in Catania and 26 in Syracuse – with Beyamim Sedaka, president of the Community of the Samaritans, which offered an interesting perspective on another way of understanding Judaism than the dominant rabbinic tradition. The Samaritans in fact express a historically founded distinct position that, although now seems smaller compared to the hegemony of rabbinic Judaism, is manifested very relevant for its great capacity for tolerance, openness, modernity in tradition. It is not to be forgotten that the Samaritans (ie that part of the people of Israel who, after the destruction of Solomon’s Temple, identified their capital in Samaria), they living today partly in the State of Israel (in particular, in the city of Cholon, south Tel Aviv) and partly in the so-called West Bank (Mount Garizim). This special condition of “people of the two sides” confers to them a special status in the Israel ID. That is, beyond the wall of Jerusalem, something which constitutes one of those hybridized realities contributing to dialogue and mutual understanding.

This premise has created, as a natural continuation of this laboratory for dialogue, the new round of the November 3, specially focused on the size of the hybridized cultures leverages trying to probe a multi-faceted, varied Mediterranean identity. Starring Suzana Glavas and Michele Gazich, the debate will start from a connecting section between Sicily with Croatia through these “Mediterranean networks” – right through secret ties that Israel Samaritan always in dialogue with the Arabs and with the Greeks – for business, for culture, knowledge and tradition – carries that make poetry, art, music and allow us to grasp, with the modern sense and future prospects, the sense of continuity and of belonging, far beyond the economic conveniences of power too often to the detriment of concrete persons.